<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>shipwrecked (in the cracks of light) by PanBoleyn</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29125923">shipwrecked (in the cracks of light)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn'>PanBoleyn</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>say you'll remember me (say you'll see me again) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magicians (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, Discussion of Canonical Suicide, Healing, M/M, Past Character Death, Post-Canon Fix-It, Quentin Coldwater Lives, Questionable Coping Mechanisms, Reconciliation, Recovery, technically canon compliant-ish but NOT s5 friendly</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 05:55:51</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>17,554</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29125923</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/PanBoleyn/pseuds/PanBoleyn</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Quentin returns to New York, Brakebills, and his old friends after rebirth and a few years away, but coming home is not as simple as returning to a location. It takes time to heal, and time to let himself open up again, but home isn't as lost as he once believed it to be. He just needs to find it in himself to trust that.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Minor or Background Relationship(s), Quentin Coldwater &amp; Julia Wicker, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>say you'll remember me (say you'll see me again) [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2130687</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>124</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>It Always Leads to You</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>shipwrecked (in the cracks of light)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello! I hope this finds you well. </p><p>This is my fic for Queliot Events' evermore event... which is part of why I decided to write a sequel to my folklore fic. It just seemed fitting. Warnings for this fic include discussion of Quentin's suicide, referencing other people going off psych meds, and some misuse of Woof Fountain and an amulet that lets someone breathe underwater. Also, Quentin violates his students' privacy - with a good motive, but the method is still a bit shady. If I missed anything, let me know!</p><p>As ever, thanks to Maii for reading over my draft and my Discord friends for cheerleading. Also thanks to Ev for inadvertently inspiring the cemetery scene.</p><p>This fic is based on the song Evermore, specifically the lyric from the working title, <i>"Motion capture put me in a bad light"</i> and the section the final title came from: <i>"And when I was shipwrecked (Can't think of all the cost)/I thought of you (All the things that will be lost now)/In the cracks of light (Can we just get a pause?)/I dreamed of you (To be certain we'll be tall again)"</i></p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Of course, a hug doesn’t solve everything. Quentin is reminded of this as soon as he and Eliot come back to his van and Quentin opens up the back for them to have coffee before they drive. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know,” Eliot says, “I always did mean to ask why the blue and green lighting scheme. It’s like an ocean-themed club in here.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His voice is light, amused and a little bewildered, definitely not in any way disapproving, but Quentin feels his hackles rise anyway. He grips his seashell amulet for a moment, feeling the power of it froth under his touch like sea foam, because he doesn’t — he doesn’t want to mess this up. He’s not exactly sure what this </span>
  <em>
    <span>is</span>
  </em>
  <span>, not yet, but he doesn’t want to ruin it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eliot said he loved him. Quentin’s own feelings are such a messy tangle that he couldn’t say it back even if he wanted to — he </span>
  <em>
    <span>does</span>
  </em>
  <span> love Eliot still, but he’s not quite sure in what </span>
  <em>
    <span>way </span>
  </em>
  <span>he loves him. He’s not sure it’s still something one can make a romantic relationship out of, for example. But he wants to find out, he wants to do things right this time and that means not snapping out at a mildly thoughtless question. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s comforting,” he finally says, which is part of the truth. “One of the first places I went, I started out just hitting tourist spots, but it was an aquarium across the river here in Camden. They do the lighting in there like you’re underwater, you know? And, it was just… soothing. So I did the same thing here.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Although Quentin does have to admit the blue and green becomes a little strange now that he’s here with someone. Seeing himself or his things colored by his lights is one thing, but seeing Eliot painted in blue and green that changes the actual colors of him, that shades his hair, skin, and eyes… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well, it is odd. And there are normal lights in here. But, stubbornly, he doesn’t offer to switch. This is his safe haven and the lighting is part of that. So he just prods his secondhand coffeemaker to life, and makes two mugs of coffee without another word. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You remember how I like it,” Eliot says when Quentin hands him the mug. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A spoonful of white sugar, two of brown, and half-and-half,” Quentin agrees, sipping his own coffee. He takes it with vanilla and Irish cream creamers now, and no sugar anymore. The creamers are a legacy from Brian’s tendency to mix up to four or five flavors, while the lack of sugar is Quentin’s own older preference for plain cream and no sugar halfway reasserting itself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Or maybe it’s from being brought back. Or just tastebuds changing with age. Who knows? </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you remember anyone else’s?” Eliot asks, curious. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Julia drinks it black with two to four sugars, depending, Margo likes honey and milk, not cream but milk. Alice will take cream or milk, doesn’t matter, with so much sugar I’m not sure of the spoonful or packet totals.” Quentin doesn’t know exactly why he remembers everyone’s coffee preference, of all the random things, except that — he always used to make the coffee, didn’t he? He couldn’t cook before his death, return, and departure, not except for a handful of breakfast foods. But he makes excellent coffee and so he’d always done that instead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He also remembers the ‘herb coffee’ they’d made in Fillory, which actually tasted closer to a sharp tea but hit the system like coffee. Eliot drank that with a lot of honey and no milk at all, while Quentin put so much milk in it the dark purple liquid was almost lavender. He doesn’t say that though. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Speaking of Margo, she says that you don’t think she likes you anymore, and she can’t figure out why. Is it because she was mad when you left town?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Quentin sighs. “I think she was done with me after Blackspire.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“OK, if that’s the case, I’m as confused as she is,” Eliot says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin sighs. “It’s just how she seemed after we got our memories back, and when she showed up with her axes. I’m willing to admit I might have read things wrong, but that’s the impression I got at the time. It’s probably something she and I will have to clear up.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eliot is quiet for a while. “There’s a lot of that here, isn’t there? Miscommunications?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin shrugs. “Probably? It’s a fucking mess is what it is, El, and I think we both know that much, don’t you?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When Eliot doesn’t argue, Quentin takes it as agreement, but the hope he’d felt only hours before seems to be fading already. He hates that, but he doesn’t know how to hold on. He used to — when his depression wasn’t actively kicking his ass at least — but he can’t remember how he did it now.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>With a mug of Eliot’s mulled wine in hand, Quentin has to concede that maybe Julia wasn’t entirely wrong when she argued that the only way for him to heal in a way that would let him belong again would be if he stuck around. Maybe he could have achieved independence without as much distance, and now he wouldn’t feel… </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Strange. </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>But it’s three days to Christmas Eve, the others are all sitting around the penthouse living room comfortably, and Quentin is perched on the steps watching them, because he isn’t sure how to… just join in. Some of it is that except for Eliot, they’re all coupled up — and being the only one aside from Eliot’s who’s unattached makes Quentin a little uneasy for more than one reason. Some of it is really just that it’s been roughly three years, total, since he’s been a part of this group. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t know what to do. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Still, it’s a lot less lonely to be here listening to them talk than it would have been in his van, so maybe it’s just early-days awkwardness that’ll sort itself out. Maybe he’s worrying too much, like he always does. It’s probably natural because things are so different from what he remembers. Eliot and Margo are leaning against each other like they always used to, but now there’s Alice on Margo’s other side, relaxed with her in a way Quentin doesn’t think she ever was with him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And isn’t that just fucking telling, especially when </span>
  <em>
    <span>he </span>
  </em>
  <span>was never that comfortable with </span>
  <em>
    <span>Alice </span>
  </em>
  <span>either?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There being two Pennys — sorry, a Penny and a Liam — is another new, jarring thing. Liam doesn’t orbit Julia the way Quentin remembers he used to do, and even though it’s been two years, Kady and Penny don’t seem to like to be out of reach of each other. Quentin finds himself a little jealous of that, but then if he’s actually jealous maybe he should go sit where he can be reached. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He remembers almost begging Eliot for a hug with something close to shame. How pathetic he must have sounded, even if Eliot was too shaken up himself to have noticed. Except that since then he’s gone right back to not being touched. Eliot hasn’t touched him again and Julia didn’t hug him, looking at him like she wasn’t sure what to do. The others had said hello, said it was good to see him again, but no one had tried to touch him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Well. Except little Hope. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That thought makes Quentin smile into his mug. Hope’s asleep now, but when he’d arrived earlier today, after taking a day on his own to compose himself, she had stared up at him, wide-eyed. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Uncle Q! You’re a person!” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Oh wow. Q, I think she thought you lived in the mirror.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin had spent the next hour with a small child attached to his leg, and the afternoon and early evening had been easy, when he’d spent most of it entertaining a toddler. But now… Now Hope is in bed — her room is his old room, partly because it had already been cleaned out when they needed a nursery. Surprisingly, he kind of likes that. He likes that a room which still features in his nightmares is now a brightly painted and decorated place for a little girl to grow up in happily. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It feels cleansing, somehow.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know, I don’t remember you being quite this antisocial, not when it’s just this group.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin looks up to see Penny leaning on the stair railing. Kady isn’t in his reach for once, shockingly — actually, she’s… up and dancing with Julia? That’s weird, and something about it doesn’t look like two old friends just having fun. Quentin knows there’s things Julia hasn’t told him, but still… Hm. Weird. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t remember you being so friendly,” he tells Penny, and that’s true. Penny is more part of the group now than Quentin feels he himself ever was, snarky humor turned softer somehow, affectionate. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, well, turns out that people don’t know you like them unless you’re nice sometimes. On the bright side, it turns out being exasperated by everyone’s fucking bullshit is more fun when someone else always is too.” Penny shrugs. “Death makes you think, what can I say?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin can’t exactly argue. It does make a guy think, but he never got much good out of those thoughts — though to be fair, his experience isn’t like Penny’s. Parts of his time in the Underworld Library seem to be something Penny values, even now. Quentin… actually kind of does value some of the things he got to see, trapped in the ambient, but that’s about it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Is this another lecture? Because honestly, I’m tired of your words of wisdom or whatever the fuck you think they are, Penny.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not a lecture. Eliot read me the riot act, and I think we had a pretty serious misunderstanding, Quentin. Look, I got to see the immediate aftermath of my death too, and seeing almost no one give a shit, after everything… I was trying to help you not be hurt like I was, to see you’d been appreciated. But apparently, the message you got was that your death was a good thing.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Gotta love depression,” Quentin says dryly. “I’d always half thought it and there you were confirming it. Or sounding like you were.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wasn’t. I was also a little whammied down there — Underworld food does shit to your head that I didn’t even feel till I came back.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You were a little Stepford-creepy,” Quentin says, finding to his own surprise that he’s smiling a little. He’s even more surprised when Penny smiles back. “Look,” he continues, “I probably would have thought it anyway. Someone else processing me might have said it outright and meant it. That’s kind of the problem, really. Part of me still thinks… I saw things seem to get better for them, you know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know, in the Underworld Library, it came up more than once that everyone is an unreliable narrator. Seems to me a bookworm nerd like you knows more about what that means than I do.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So, what, I didn’t see what I thought I saw?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Or maybe you only saw the things they let everyone see.” When Quentin doesn’t answer, Penny sighs. “Fine. Think what you like. But a little tip? You left. You came back. That means the boundaries here are on you. You keep back, they’re gonna keep back. I figured that out the hard way. You say I’m still friendlier than I was? That’s why. Because acting like I hated everyone kept them from caring when I wanted to be missed. Just saying.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Kady calls Penny’s name and he walks over just as a laughing Julia spins Kady into his arms before she drops to sit next to Liam. Something is up there, isn’t it? Maybe if he asks, Julia will tell him? Still, the idea of asking is awkward. The idea of just… going over there is actually </span>
  <em>
    <span>frightening</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Quentin was never really all that good at making the first move — the only time he can remember trying is when he’d tried to get Alice to tutor him and that hadn’t gone well. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Julia had approached him, back when they were only a couple years older than Hope is now. Eliot and Margo had gone past approaching to basically </span>
  <em>
    <span>commandeering </span>
  </em>
  <span>him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And as for Alice, despite his fumbling attempts to reach out, what brought them together was Jane Chatwin burning a sigil into his fucking palm, which really should have told him something at the time. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So how does one go about stepping forward when success has never before been achieved? Eliot said he misunderstood everything, and so has Penny, now. Quentin doesn’t know how much the others know, doesn’t know what they’d say. He suspects Alice at least would stand her ground on </span>
  <em>
    <span>‘we did what we had to do’</span>
  </em>
  <span> but at least that’s a clear answer. There isn’t really much between him and Kady to begin with, he and Liam never liked each other. As for Margo, well, that’s one big question mark in general right now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sets the boundaries. Easy concept to understand, much harder to change. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he stays on the stairs, and goes back down to his van to sleep because there aren’t any spare bedrooms. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tells himself he doesn’t mind. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>In  a way, Quentin actually doesn’t mind sleeping in his van again. After all, his little nest of a bed is more comfortable than the couch — he knows this because it’s the same couch it was years ago and he slept out there a lot. The Monster could and did still show up there, but he couldn’t spoon up behind Quentin there like he could on a bed. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Thus, the couch. He doesn’t really want to sleep there again. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he also doesn’t want to explain any of this, or seem like he’s rejecting their hospitality. (He’s not exactly sure who </span>
  <em>
    <span>they </span>
  </em>
  <span>are, because Julia and Liam are raising Hope there and it’s Kady’s apartment where she lives with Penny, but everyone else has a bedroom there and it’s sort of general group headquarters.) So he gets up horribly early so he can go back up to the apartment, figuring if he’s caught letting himself in he can say he was checking something. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>This actually works until Christmas Eve morning, when Quentin uses the ward and key he’d been given to open the door and finds Julia at the kitchen counter, scowling at him. “Why are you just coming in now? Did you sleep in your van?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin shrugs, sliding his hands into his pockets. “I didn’t want to sleep on the couch, but I didn’t want to cause a fuss about it,” he explains, sheepish. “I didn’t think it mattered all that much? I’m here, right?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sleep on the couch? Who said you would be sleeping on the couch?” Julia asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have been here before, Julia, I know how many rooms there are.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Julia stares at him for a long moment, then grabs his wrist and tugs. Really, he could stop her from towing him along by standing his ground, and for a moment he considers it, but in the end he decides to follow her instead, because he honestly doesn’t know why his explanation seemed to make things worse. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Julia pulls him upstairs to the half-loft that, when Quentin was last here, had contained Marina’s library and that was it. Except that now the space stretches down a small hallway with… Oh. Three more rooms, it looks like, and Julia takes him to the first one. She pushes open the first door and Quentin stops dead. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s a guest room. It’s impersonal, with a random painting on the wall as the only real decoration.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the comforter on the bed is the exact same shade of green as the one Quentin picked out for his dorm room, the first time he ever got to pick for himself. He can still remember being set loose in the mall with Julia to go dorm shopping, how they’d spent hours picking things out because it was the first time all the choices were theirs. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I — I didn’t know.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why didn’t you </span>
  <em>
    <span>ask</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Q?” Julia demands. “It’s a completely normal question to ask where you’re supposed to sleep.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin blinks, and finally all he can say is the truth. “It didn’t occur to me to ask.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And that’s what I don’t get! You’re back, you said you’re taking the job, you came back with Eliot and he sounded so happy when he called me, but now you’re just drifting around the edges like you still don’t belong!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I don’t!” Quentin snaps. “I don’t belong. I don’t belong because I’m — because I left, but I had to leave because if I stayed I’d have ended up honestly hating you all. Because Alice isn’t entirely wrong about me — I didn’t leave out of revenge but I was angry. Part of me is always going to be angry, I think. But I didn’t want to </span>
  <em>
    <span>hate </span>
  </em>
  <span>you. Only now… Now I don’t know what to do.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’re still us, Q. We’re not going to hurt you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Aren’t you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That isn’t fair,” Julia says. “You died. You left us, and we — we did our best to carry on. We thought we were honoring your sacrifice.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sick of people calling it that! I committed suicide, Julia. I spiraled for months and no one fucking noticed. And, yes, at the end of the day I make my own choices, God knows I’m pissed at myself too, but I just — I don’t think I have any </span>
  <em>
    <span>trust </span>
  </em>
  <span>left, Julia. In — in anyone, maybe. I don’t know how to ask about anything, even as stupid as a room, because it doesn’t occur to me that’s an option! That help, or, or an accommodation, or whatever, is even possible.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s never said it out loud before, but now that it’s put into words, Quentin realizes this really is the heart of the problem. He doesn’t feel safe with his friends anymore. He doesn’t feel safe unless he’s alone, in his space, because that’s the only time he knows he won’t be hurt. He sinks down to sit on the edge of the bed, staring at the floor and wondering how long before the screaming starts, and then the being told to just fuck off then.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We wanted to help you when you came back,” Julia says quietly, sitting next to him. “We could have proved it then.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Except I didn’t believe you, don’t you see? I thought you were offering scraps of your shiny new lives and I didn’t want them.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And now? Damn it, Quentin, can’t you just… let us bring you back in? Is it really that hard to do?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin looks up into Julia’s eyes, those familiar big brown eyes he remembers in a little girl, in a teenager and in a woman. He knows what she wants to hear; hell, it’s what he wants to say, even. But he doesn’t know if it’s the truth, and that’s the problem, isn’t it? “I don’t know, Julia. I want to. I’m tired of being alone. But I’m scared. I’m so scared I swear I can taste it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of us? Still?” Julia asks, swallowing hard. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin shakes his head. “Not exactly. More like — like – scared in general. Scared of myself, I think, because. Because I </span>
  <em>
    <span>want </span>
  </em>
  <span>to belong again, but I don’t think I can, and I don’t — I won’t protect myself if I relax, and I feel like I need to protect myself. Because no one else will.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Julia shakes her head. “Then why did you come back?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because I missed everyone. Because I was tired of being alone.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Julia reaches for Quentin’s hand, squeezing gently. “You’re not alone. You never were. I — clearly we fucked up somewhere. And no offense but it takes two so some of that misunderstanding is on you, but… But you came back. I didn’t realize how much of an effort it sounds like that was for you. So maybe that makes it our turn.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, you do have a guest room that’s a little set up for me,” Quentin says. “I’m not sure taking turns is really gonna work overall but it — it’s not a bad starter plan.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He makes coffee for everyone that morning, and he knows how four of them take it. Julia fills him in on the Pennys — Penny and Liam — and Kady, and he handles the rest. Like him, Julia can’t do much more cooking but breakfast food, so she makes the omelettes her dad taught both of them how to do one weekend sleepover before he… ‘got sick’ while he makes coffee and toast. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It feels like they’re back in Julia’s loft for a moment, making breakfast on the weekend for themselves and James. Quentin wonders about James for a moment, where he is and how he’s doing, but if Julia was wiped from his memory than presumably Quentin was too. He has no idea what damage could result from looking James up now, but… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Do you ever think about James?” he asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Sometimes,” Julia says. “I wonder if the memory patch wore off, but… He’d have gotten hurt, at best, if we mixed him back up in our lives, don’t you think?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unfortunately, that’s probably true.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And it’s been so long by now anyway. Also, he’s married. I saw on his Facebook page. So it would all just be fucking weird, and probably screw up his life whether the patch held or not. It’s better to just let things be,” Julia declares, sliding eggs onto a plate and waving a charm to keep them hot and fresh. Quentin does the same over the mugs of coffee and bites the tip of his tongue because he’s not so sure about that. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He remembers the White Lady offering to take his memories of Alice, and more recently, there had been an interesting encounter with a person of indeterminate gender he’s pretty sure was part fae of some flavor or other. They had offered to wipe his mind clean, so he could start again unburdened. There’d been an appeal to the idea, but in the end… His memories </span>
  <em>
    <span>are </span>
  </em>
  <span>him, for better or worse.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin freezes in the act of pressing down the toaster lever. His memories are him, for better or worse. Most of the memories here are for worse, but… But maybe the point is to keep making them. If his memories are his life, then living is making more of them, right? Maybe the problem is he has too many that only belong to him, now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It had been safer that way, but maybe… maybe that’s the start. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When the others come down to find coffee made to their own preferences, Eliot picks up his own mug and gives Quentin a sly little smile. Quentin blinks, and then returns it. Shyer than he would have, once, but he returns it all the same. It feels like that first breath after swimming underwater long enough that not breathing starts to hurt. It’s not the same as the first breath after nearly drowning, or the first breath of reformed lungs after being dead and scattered across the multiverse — it’s not better or worse, Quentin knows, even though an observer would say it’s better because of the lower stakes, or worse because it can’t be as good. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Neither of those are true. Because the first breath of air after being underwater is the first step back into where you belong. Humans aren’t meant for water, after all. They can visit, they can spend hours in the ocean, in a lake, in a pool, but in the end a human has to go back to land. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Making coffee and smiling is like swimming up from the bottom of the deep end toward the surface. Later that day, Quentin tells the story of the selkies whose cursed pelts he was able to repair, and how they gave him his pendant as repayment for it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Technically, Quentin can breathe underwater, wearing his necklace. Technically, he could have carried on never coming back. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But Alice has questions on selkie culture, and Julia wants to know what their magic is like. Little Hope asks if they made him eat raw fish. Margo has a story about negotiating with merrows in New Fillory — merrows and selkies aren’t the same, but as her story unfolds they both find themselves chuckling at the weird similarities — and Eliot turns out to have met a selkie clan in the Gulf of Mexico and has his own adventure to share, though he never does explain why he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>at </span>
  </em>
  <span>the Gulf of Mexico.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin has answers, and questions of his own, and it feels like his head broke the surface. He’s treading water, but his toes just scraped the bottom. Soon he might be able to stand.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Christmas and New Year’s had never quite stopped being a little weird, but it had been a good kind of weird, Quentin thought. Now, though, he’s moved into faculty quarters at Brakebills — Eliot’s right down the hall, and Quentin’s own door is actually across from the one-time closet that now serves as a portal from the penthouse for Julia and sometimes Liam. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin never did get the full story on how Liam lost his traveling powers, regained them only when touching Hope, and now has them sometimes thanks to some ritual with Penny, but needs to ‘recharge’ them a few times a week. Quentin supposes he doesn’t need to know, especially since Liam still isn’t particularly fond of him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The point is that the portal is there, and useful for everyone with reason to split time between the penthouse in Manhattan and Brakebills.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Unpacking is odd. His van didn’t have any more space than this — less, actually, this room is a studio about the size of the upperclassmen dorms at Columbia, with a kitchenette and a small bathroom. His van is similar, but about half the size. When everything he owns is unpacked, it doesn’t look too bad — he’s made a nest of his bed again, and he bought frames for some of his favorite drawings so that the walls look less bare. The books he’s collected over his travels are actually enough to fill the bookshelf he was given and then some, so the ones he’s least likely to want to read soon are still in a box until he gets another shelf. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The real problem, he realizes with some degree of embarrassment, is that he doesn’t have enough fairy lights. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Fairy lights. British term, but given Quentin has his up year-round, it feels more appropriate than Christmas lights.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Technically, of course, he has enough to stretch across the room. But not enough to light the room the way they did in his van. Not enough to tint the light from the regular lamps so that he spends his days washed in blue-green but still, you know. Able to see what he’s doing. It shouldn’t bother him, because he only really needs the lights at night. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The cool of light like being underwater is the best comfort he’s found, when he wakes from nightmares of the void, of blazing fires and golden sparks. It’s still perfect for that, and Quentin tells himself that’s all he needs. That Eliot was right, anyway, when he implied it was weird to live in ocean-light. This is about coming back to reality, isn’t it? About no longer being a nomad and growing up properly? Real grownups don’t do weird shit with the lights in their house. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Real adults don’t need specifically colored nightlights either, probably, but some things just can’t be helped.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He tries not to think about it. He has classes to teach. Transfigurations and transmutations, beginner and intermediate, and Introduction to Ink Magic. It’s actually inadvisable to teach precisely your discipline to a general class — discipline casting is done on a more instinctive level, making it hard to teach to others unless they have the same or similar disciplines. So instead they have Quentin teaching the things he’d learned while he was away. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He also has a once-a-week session that’s The Theory Of Crafting Magics, which was a surprise. When Quentin was a student, magic worked through making things wasn’t something Brakebills considered worth studying, more the sort of thing only hedges did. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin wonders who changed things, because with Fogg still in charge he wouldn’t have expected it. He wonders just how much Fogg knows about what he got up to in the last few years, to assign him these classes in particular. But at the end of the day, fussing about precisely how much information Henry Fogg does or doesn’t have just — isn’t worth it, in Quentin’s opinion. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Once, he’d expected to teach in tweed jackets with patches on the elbows. Cliche academic, teaching philosophy to bored students. Brian taught English in a suit jacket. Quentin shows up in blue or red or green sweaters and jeans, his shimmery-blue shell pendant always around his neck, the green dye washed from his braided-back white hair. Here, he doesn’t bother to wear the tinted glasses that hide his dark gold eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It takes three weeks before someone asks. Micah, a first-year Knowledge student, raises his hand in class and asks, “Professor Coldwater, are we likely to have magic mess with our hair and eyes like you?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s not likely,” Quentin says, and because class is almost over he leans against his desk, sliding his hands into his pockets. “There’s always a chance that spellwork will have weird effects, but the odds are low it’ll be something like this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re one of the Returns, aren’t you?” another student asks -— Diana, a Naturalist with some kind of rare animal magic. “But my uncle’s another of the Returned and his hair and eyes are the same color they were before he died.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin tries and fails to take a deep breath, but he still can breathe so he’s not in trouble yet. “Yes, well, my circumstances were unique,” he explains, and then the bell rings, thank fuck. He doesn’t have another class until this afternoon, so he sits in his office for a little while, but it doesn’t help. The sunlight is too bright through the windows, and he can hear too much from the campus outside. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His room is no better, because he has only thin curtains that don’t darken the room enough when he shuts out everything but his fairy lights. Too loud, too bright, and he just — he can’t —</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin sits up on his bed. It’s a terrible idea, of course. But he doesn’t let himself think as he strips off his sweater and jeans, exchanging them for a thin t-shirt and jogging pants that won’t feel as heavy if they get wet. He doesn’t let himself think as he casts a ‘don’t notice me’ spell on himself and leaves the faculty housing building to walk to Woof Fountain. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His amulet lets him breathe underwater, after all, and another spell to make him heavier keeps him under the surface. Here in the water everything is quiet. Here in the water, the sunlight is diffused and shows in water lines on his skin. Quentin thinks it looks like he’s still fragmented, the way the light patterns show on him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe he is. Maybe that’s the real problem here.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But he can breathe, and the light is soft, and the world is silent except for the soft murmuring of the water. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He rolls over, floating inches below the surface and held there by his spell, limbs splayed in what he was always told is called a dead-man’s float. An ex-ghost, floating like the dead in Suicide Fountain, a magical amulet letting him breathe. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Suicide Fountain can’t kill me now. There should be something in that.</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe there is. Quentin doesn’t know. But at least, when he climbs out, dripping and chilled with the day’s breeze — but it’s still warm otherwise, as Brakebills nearly always is — he doesn’t feel shaky anymore. It feels like a challenge, like a dare given and met, to jump into a death trap and stay there just for a little quiet. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It feels like defiance of his own story to climb back out of said death trap — nicknamed for the same kind of death he undid for himself —  unscathed.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t tell Eliot or Julia about this because he’s pretty sure it will scare them. He doesn’t tell Dr. Griffin about this because for some reason, when he thinks about it, he remembers hacking off his own hair in a hotel bathroom, the way his wild laughter echoed off the tiles. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>It turns out that Quentin Coldwater does have a headstone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can feel the magic when he brushes his hands over the smooth space where a year of death is supposed to be, which tells him that there was previously something there. His original year of death, presumably, erased after his return by… someone. Whoever paid to put the stone here, most likely. Actually, there’s magic all over the thing, as if it was completely redesigned, which makes sense because there’s space now for another name, like the headstone two over where Quentin’s Coldwater grandparents are buried together, both their names on the stone.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He doesn’t remember his grandfather but he always used to wonder if it unnerved his grandmother to see her name there when she went to visit, once a month. An undeniable little </span>
  <em>
    <span>memento mori</span>
  </em>
  <span>, your name on a grave just waiting for you. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(When Quentin buried Eliot, he only lasted a couple of months himself after that, and he spent most of that time in a spare bed at Teddy’s house. So it hadn’t really been the same.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>His headstone has only his name and his birthdate, no inscription, but centered under his name and the blank space where someone else’s name might go, someone put — it’s a book, made up of little colored tiles. Quentin lets his fingers trace over it, and the thing is. The thing is. The book looks just like an old leather-bound dictionary Julia’s dad kept, which they claimed ownership of as a ‘spellbook’ or a ‘History of Fillory’ or any number of other things. It looks like the book from countless childhood games, made out of little red glass tiles. A tiny mosaic book like several of the designs he suggested for him and Eliot to try. On his headstone.</span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“But when Penny came back, Julia and I started talking. I don’t know what we were gonna do, we didn’t get that far, I told you. But you beat us to it, baby.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>Eliot said he and Julia were talking about the possibility of saving him after all but… but maybe… just in case… they wanted there to be something that said Quentin had existed, that he had lived, even if he was gone. Maybe it should hurt, to know they were still preparing to leave him in the grave, yet he thinks he’s more comforted than anything else to see that he wasn’t as forgotten as it had looked.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But that isn’t why he’s here, with a little potted tree in his hands. It’s spelled so that no one who would get rid of it will notice it, and it’s a tiny maple. Evy, one of the hedges from the Sioux City coven he worked with all those months ago, is a Naturalist who makes miniature trees for a living. This one, she says, will stay small even if Quentin plants it, which is what he’s here to do. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maples were always his father’s favorite. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey Dad,” he says quietly, as he digs up the grass and makes a careful hole over his father’s grave. “Sorry it took me so long to come by. I, uh. I didn’t make it much longer than you did, but there was a way back for me. I’ve been taking it ever since, I think.” Because, really, he’s not sure how long he’s actually been alive, even when his heart was beating. Not for a while, he doesn’t think. Sometimes he thinks he’s still coming back to life, still only partway dug out of the metaphorical grave. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s got grave dirt under his nails for the second time in all the years he can remember, but he settles the little tree and pats dirt down carefully around it just like Evy showed him to do over webcam the other day. And then he presses a finger to the polished stone below his father’s carved name, and he traces the shape of a plane. He traces it, then another and another while he whispers a spell he learned in Colorado for stonework. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When his hand drops away, there’s a carving of planes circling in flight, and Quentin kneels there for a while as silent tears trickle down his face. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry no one was there to bury you. You deserved better.” His father deserved better, and Quentin, only months later, got better and had still been so desperately angry by the time he returned. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It isn’t the same, but… Quentin thinks of a bonfire in the dark, the flickering warm light and a ridiculously inappropriate song filling the air in what he </span>
  <em>
    <span>thinks </span>
  </em>
  <span>was meant as a kind gesture. It wasn’t any better, was it? His friends had been honoring a lie, a story that his death was a brave sacrifice. His dad died alone, and if Quentin hadn’t wanted magic back so badly he’d still be alive. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Except — they got magic shut off by accident. They had no way to know that would be the consequence. But the thing about what Alice did and that Quentin sometimes thinks he should have done, trying to stop them... The thing about that is, magic is supposed to be in the world, putting it back was redressing the balance. They hadn’t had the right to </span>
  <em>
    <span>choose </span>
  </em>
  <span>to keep it gone for everyone. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(That doesn’t make Quentin feel less guilty, but it’s still true.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I have a second chance, Dad,” he says as he gets up. “I’m going to try to not waste any more of it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But when he gets back to campus, he casts a don’t-notice-me and tips himself backward into the fountain. He’s been doing it a couple times a week now. Sometimes he even swims a little. He feels like he’s looking for something in the depths, but he’s not sure </span>
  <em>
    <span>what.</span>
  </em>
  <span> He likes to float vertically, suspended in the water as if hovering in the air. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He feels like he’s waiting, not quite anchored but no longer drifting away. And mimicking that feeling with physicality helps, somehow. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(For a moment, before the sparks began to burn, they simply lifted him off his feet. For a moment, before there was pain, there was a weightlessness like flying. Sometimes, drifting in the water feels like that too. But the coolness where once he burned reminds him how different it is.)</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Most days, Quentin actually likes teaching well enough. He likes the questions the students ask, he likes getting to talk about parts of magic he loves and understands. He likes that Julia’s classes are in the same building as most of his, and their schedules match up such that they can meet up for lunch a few days a week.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Sometimes Eliot’s with them, and sometimes it’s just Quentin and Eliot. He also happens to know that on the day he has his crafting magics lecture, the two of them meet up without him. It’s an odd thing— to see that Julia and Eliot are friends— but it’s a</span>
  <em>
    <span> good</span>
  </em>
  <span> kind of odd. They talk about all kinds of things; Julia, in spite of a busy schedule between teaching and parenting a toddler, still makes time to work with Kady and her hedges. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The smile on her face as she recounts a story about a coven in Baltimore finally breaks Quentin’s patience, one day at a three-person lunch. “OK, seriously, what is with you and Kady now?” he asks, and he gets his answer almost immediately in Julia’s suddenly wicked grin and Eliot’s delighted laugh.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We each have a Penny, and we have each other too,” Julia says, and Quentin is glad he just swallowed a bite of his sandwich or else he would have either choked or spat it across the table. Although, really, it kind of makes sense, doesn’t it? There’d always been an energy there, and maybe it somehow connects to how each of them had versions of the same guy fall for them? He probably shouldn’t say that, though.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Good for you,” he says, and means it. Also, it’s the safest response. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I keep asking her if they trade tips on their guys, but if they do, Wicker here won’t admit it,” Eliot says, with an echo of the half-grown boy Quentin first knew. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“A lady doesn’t kiss and tell, Waugh,” Julia says, rolling her eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s like that, more days than not, and slowly Quentin starts to relax. It’s as if there are knots inside him that he didn’t know were there, until he started spending coffee breaks and lunch hours with the people who always knew him best, in their different ways. Until Eliot starts towing him down the hall for dinner because “I’m trying something new and I need a second opinion, Q.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You realize my palate is still the opposite of refined, right?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s still a different opinion than mine.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are movie nights at the penthouse where Quentin watches Kady and Julia cuddle while both Penny and Liam seem completely unconcerned. Eliot slips an arm around Quentin’s shoulders each time, always careful like he expects to be shrugged away. Quentin never does, and he still wakes up from dreams tangled and twisted in his blankets, but now the dreams are… less nebulous. Less a craving for touch in general, and more a craving for a specific touch. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>His dreams are, more often than not, memories of a once-and-never life. And, of course, of the man he lived it with.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>But more of the knots are still there, tight and tied and making it hard to breathe some days. Making it hard to truly feel, every day. Quentin wants, and he loves, but the only person whose affection doesn’t make him feel at least a bit like running is little Hope’s, because children that young don’t know how to be anything but genuine.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He likes everyone’s company. He loves them all in his own way — even Kady and Penny and Liam, to an extent. There are resentments there on multiple sides, and the simple lack of understanding that comes with not being close, but he finds himself with a certain fondness anyway. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>(Maybe it’s the same kind of absent soft feeling that made Kady cast the sing-along spell, at the bonfire. It’s the only gesture from that night with no sting in it, the only one Quentin can wholly take in the spirit he thinks it was meant.)</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Julia is his oldest friend, the first person he wanted to give his heart to, and Eliot… Eliot has his heart, and always will, it really is that simple. Quentin understands these things now, but he can’t quite bring himself to show them. He can’t settle that completely. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He keeps going into the fountain because when he’s in the water, he doesn’t feel the knots. There’s only the cool motion against his skin, only the dimming of light as he dives, the darkness below that he never reaches. He doesn’t know if the amulet will help with water pressure, so he never dares go too far. Still, sometimes he wonders if he’d find some more answers if he could just reach the dark. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>If nothing else, aiming for the dark, even if he never reaches it, makes it easier to enjoy the moment of coming back into the light.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>One day, all Quentin can think when he gets to their usual table for lunch is that Julia and Eliot are the only ones who might be as blindingly, utterly furious as he is. “I did something stupid,” he says, yanking his chair out hard enough that it almost topples. He sits down, but he can’t eat, hands fisted on either side of his unwrapped sandwich. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m sure it’s not that bad,” Eliot says carefully. “What happened?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin shakes his head, staring at his whitened knuckles. He stares and stares until smaller hands cover his, gently uncurling his fingers to reveal that his nails cut into his palms. “Fuck, Q, what’s wrong? Tell us,” Julia says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin looks up at them then, sees the worry and — </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Something loosens up inside, even as another part of him, freshly wounded, twists up tighter. He remembers — remembers his own words to Julia when he’d first come back to New York.</span>
  <em>
    <span> I don’t know how to ask about anything, even as stupid as a room, because it doesn’t occur to me that’s an option! That help, or, or an accommodation, or whatever, is even possible.</span>
  </em>
  <span> Maybe — maybe what he needs to do is explain. They’ve both been teaching longer than he has, maybe there’s something — </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He can’t do much about this alone. He simply can’t. But if he can calm down enough to ask for help… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not about him. But if he can ask for this then maybe he’ll remember that he can ask at all. “I put a spelled question on my latest round of tests, meant only to show up for people who are supposed to be on psych meds but aren’t anymore. I have a lot of kids in more than one of my classes, I don’t teach a particularly large number. Eleven of them saw the question and answered yes. Another saw the question and answered no, but for her to see it means she too was on meds and isn’t now — maybe she took herself off instead, I don’t know.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait, I don’t understand,” Julia says, frowning. “Why did you want to know about their meds? Q, you know better than anyone that those things are private!”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“He hasn’t been on meds that long, only since he came back, right?” Eliot asks, and Julia freezes. But her eyes sharpen as if she’s beginning to realize exactly why he would invade his students’ privacy for something like this.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Quentin, didn’t you take your meds while you were at Brakebills?” she asks slowly.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Wait, you had prescribed meds?” Eliot demands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I told you I’d been hospitalized,” Quentin points out, and Eliot makes a face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I thought maybe they got you between prescriptions or something. Why the fuck would you go off your meds, Quentin?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because Henry Fogg told me that I wasn’t really depressed, I just needed magic,” Quentin says, and watches both Eliot and Julia go pale. “I figured out pretty quick that my brain still wasn’t quite right but I thought it was an adjustment period. Before either of you say anything, yes, I know I should have asked — Eliot, I think we did talk about it at the Mosaic, I remember an argument and a tea that tasted like straw, but I didn’t until after I died and came back — but I just… I never </span>
  <em>
    <span>questioned</span>
  </em>
  <span> it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, of course not,” Julia sighs. “At first you had no reason to think the Dean was lying to you, and then shit was so hectic it was probably impossible to tell what was situational and what was chemical.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So you wanted to see if he was doing this to other students,” Eliot says. “And he is?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Must be,” Quentin says. “I’d hoped that maybe it was connected to the timeloops. You know, magic comes from pain, so if I’m not medicated I’m in more pain and my magic’s stronger? These days I have a strong suspicion the theory needs work anyway —” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Pain triggers magic, I’m not convinced you need to stay in pain to keep leveling up,” Julia cuts in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I certainly didn’t have stronger magic at my most miserable — in adulthood, that is. As a teenager I just had to keep it from exploding out of me at any strong emotion,” Eliot says, mouth twisting and eyes averted from them. Quentin briefly considers asking when this was and decides it’s probably not a good idea. Also, part of him might just know, and that’s — he can’t think about that.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, so the premise is flawed, but if you believe pain and, I don’t know, stress and shit strengthen magic for anything except wild bursts at greatest need, then it must make sense to keep people unmedicated. Like that bullshit theory that meds will ruin an artist’s creativity. The thing is — I can’t let him keep doing this,” Quentin says earnestly. “Not after what happened to me.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They both look back at him now, and Quentin sighs. “I killed myself at the Seam. Maybe, after everything that had happened, one trauma after another, the meds wouldn’t have been enough to make my head that little bit clearer so I’d make it out. I don’t know. I’ll never know if that one thing could have tipped the balance any more than whatever other one thing might exist.” He’s thinking of a letter dropped down a well, he’s thinking of a best friend who tried to help him by saying she needed him instead of asking him to talk to her about what was so horrible about this particular moment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And in that flash of thought Quentin realizes he doesn’t blame them anymore. He isn’t — he’s still angry at the whole situation, he’s still angry no one tried to </span>
  <em>
    <span>save</span>
  </em>
  <span> him, but the blame is gone. Eliot and Julia meant no harm; the opposite, in fact. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He clears his throat and finally manages to unwrap his sandwich and take a bite. He swallows and then says, “But what I do know is that being unmedicated stacked the odds against me. I can’t just let that happen to more people, but I don’t know how to do anything about it without getting fired so I can’t help anyone.” He drinks some soda, the fizz almost sharp against his tongue. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Can you help?” he asks, and despite the lingering sweet flavor of his drink, he can taste his own fear like copper in his mouth. What if they won’t help? What if they think he’s refusing to take responsibility for his own choices and projecting? This is stupid, of course they won’t help when he’s pushed them away so much —</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What do you need us to do?” Julia asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’ll be easy enough to start pulling kids aside, let word spread,” Eliot says.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A tension leaves Quentin then, as they discuss the best ways to discreetly spread word to the student body that no, psych meds are a necessity. Not everything has come loose, not yet. But he’s beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, he can start to relax.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin begins to relax, but he’s still not quite at ease. His room is still too — too bright, the light too yellow. It’s not gold but it’s still just not calming enough. Dr. Griffin says to buy more fairy lights and work on carefully adjusting himself bit by bit to normal lighting, but Quentin hesitates. It just feels silly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So instead, he keeps making trips to the waters of Woof Fountain. He doesn’t tell anyone, and the truth is that it’s stopped being all that comforting. He doesn’t feel like there’s answers in the depths anymore, it’s just that it’s quiet in the water and he never gets much quiet elsewhere anymore. It’s just that it’s become a habit now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He does notice that the skies are grey rather than blue, but that happens sometimes so Quentin doesn’t take it as the warning of rain it would be anywhere else. Brakebills’ weather is almost always perfect, and today is a warmer day so it’s perfect for a swim. Or whatever other word one might use to describe his visits. Maybe it’s a weird kind of meditation? Maybe it doesn’t really matter, given that he doesn’t have to tell anyone about it?</span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s no one around when Quentin gets to the fountain, but he casts the don’t-notice-me spell anyway before he slips into the water. Cool quiet surrounds him and he closes his eyes, about to cast the spell that makes him less buoyant, when suddenly arms are wrapping around him and he’s being yanked back up out of the water. Disoriented, Quentin struggles until his head clears the surface and he realizes — </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh shit. It’s Eliot. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>They half fall onto the grass and then Quentin doesn’t have a chance to get properly to his feet before Eliot’s hauling him up. His hands are tight enough around Quentin’s upper arms that he thinks he might bruise, those gold-hazel eyes wide and frantic as Eliot searches his face. “What were you doing, Q? What the fuck was that?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh no. He thinks — “Eliot, no, it’s not what you think."</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You were diving into Suicide Fountain!” Eliot says, shaking him a little. “What am I supposed to think?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, it’s — my amulet, remember? I told you, I can breathe underwater. I just go in there sometimes, El.” Eliot’s face goes from frightened to rigid and unreadable, and Quentin rambles on, suddenly frightened. “It’s — it’s quiet, and the light’s different. Real light is too — too white, too yellow, and I got used to my own company, sometimes I just need the quiet, which is funny because when I was on my own I needed more noise but I —” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The rumble of thunder and a sudden gust of cold wind makes Quentin stop talking. The price of Brakebills’ weather spells is that a few times a year, huge chilly thunderstorms blow up out of nowhere. Apparently today is one of those days. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ll talk at the apartments,” Eliot says, his voice as blank as his face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin could refuse, but he doesn’t want to. He has to make this right. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Halfway there, the skies open, and by the time they make it to the apartments they’re both drenched — well, they already were, but this water is cold and the winds are colder. “El,” Quentin begins, shivering. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eliot looks back at him and his eyes are so sad, it makes Quentin want to cry. “Dry off and then come over to my room? Please, Q. I — I can’t — we </span>
  <em>
    <span>need </span>
  </em>
  <span>to talk about this.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“OK,” Quentin says softly. And the thing is that he knows he could simply not go over. Eliot won’t force his way in — at least Quentin’s fairly sure of that. But, somehow, the impulse to do that, to just hide away and keep safe, never materializes. He’s very nervous about all this, of course, but the idea of hiding from Eliot just doesn’t feel right anymore. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>So Quentin dries off and changes clothes, jeans and a thick blue sweater because he still feels chilled, and then heads across the hall to knock on Eliot’s door. When he opens it, Eliot’s changed too, into black jeans and a dark cardigan Quentin recognizes because — because he stole it once, he wore it the night the Monster got the last stone as if it could somehow comfort him. He remembers tearing it off and throwing it at the wall after Liam traveled them out of Aengus’ place. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s milk heating in a saucepan on the stove, which makes sense — Eliot doesn’t like tea and they’re both too jittery for coffee but they’re cold, so, something warm. Except… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I can’t. Not hot chocolate. I can’t — can’t drink it anymore. It, it’s a, a kind of trigger for me. Except if it’s white chocolate, I can drink that.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eliot frowns, then reaches into his cabinet instead, adding vanilla, honey, and cinnamon — and a little bit of whiskey, it looks like — to the milk, then pouring out the concoction into two mugs. Eliot’s mugs are plain but they’re black, not white, which helps. Quentin can drink out of white mugs but he prefers not to. His are all fandom themed but also colored. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I wasn’t trying to kill myself again, I promise,” he says, staring at the creamy liquid in his mug. Carefully, he sips — it’s good, better than any of the mixes Quentin’s come up with when he wanted something warm that wasn’t coffee or tea. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You said you like the quiet, and the different light. Is that why the blue and green light, Q? And the hot chocolate…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin swallows hard, then makes himself look up at Eliot. They’re sitting across from each other at Eliot’s small table, and Quentin keeps one hand curled around his mug but presses the other flat to the table, focusing on the different sensations of them. He doesn’t let himself look away from Eliot’s worried eyes. “In the magic, it was all fire — golden, mostly. And the Underworld is cold fluorescent light. I told you it was comforting. More so than even I knew until I moved in here and the fairy lights I have weren’t enough to do much. I needed — and I can breathe underwater so I just —” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He sighs. “And, I don’t know. People jump in there to die, but it can’t kill me as long as I have my amulet. It, it felt affirming somehow? I don’t know, El. I just…” Quentin stares down at the table, at his hand splayed against the wood. His other hand, wrapped around black ceramic. His gaze travels to both of Eliot’s hands cradling his own mug, and then up to his face. Eliot is frowning, lips pressed tightly together and jaw clenched as if fighting to keep his silence. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“And the hot chocolate is my pomegranate,” he says, volunteering something Eliot didn’t ask. He isn’t sure why he’s saying it, except that with each word he feels a little less heavy. “When I was in the Underworld, after I died and Penny was processing me, he gave me hot chocolate. And I said — ‘I’m dead but there’s still hot chocolate. That’s a good sign —’”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin’s voice cracks, and he covers his face with his hands. “I didn’t drink it. I think, now, that might be why — I was ready, you know? Or, or resigned. Determined to face that fucking doorway and cross over like it was just another quest. Just do it. But only part of me got there, to the Underworld. I think if I’d drunk it, that part would have pulled the rest of me to the afterlife instead. Now I can’t drink it. Can’t even handle chocolate anything, some days. Cake’s usually all right, candy… sometimes. Better if there’s other stuff with it. Peanut butter, icing of other flavors, things like that.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>A big hand comes to rest on his shoulder, warmth soaking through his sweater. Quentin lifts his head and looks up to find Eliot standing next to him, offering his other hand. Quentin, unsure, takes it and finds himself drawn into a tight hug just like that day at the fountain. He presses his face into Eliot’s cardigan and can’t help noticing — his cologne or soap or whatever’s changed. It’s still rich and spicy but there’s a… something mint to it now, more herbal than the candy cane peppermint soap Quentin likes to use but sort of similar all the same. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I get it. And no more hot chocolate when you’re around. But, Quentin. That fountain thing has to stop.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know I scared you, but —” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not just that you scared me, although you fucking did,” Eliot says, taking Quentin by the arms and nudging him back so that they can look at each other. “I’m not gonna say if it’s good or bad for you to be giving the metaphorical finger to a place literally nicknamed for suicides after you reversed your own. But first, is it still helping?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin shrugs. “Less now? It’s mostly a habit. When things get too loud or too bright, I know I can go there?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What if the amulet stops working, Q? There’s always been rumors that the fountain doesn’t always let people who fall in come back out, and I have a feeling your seashell protects you from that as well, but if the magic ever wears out you might not have time to get out.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Oh. “I didn’t think of that,” Quentin says honestly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t think so. You need to stop, Q, before something like that happens. Please. I don’t think you want to risk your life again and I can’t —- not again, Q, please.” Eliot lets go of one of Quentin’s arms, reaching up to brush his fingers down Quentin’s cheek. Quentin closes his eyes, leaning into Eliot’s touch and just breathing for a moment. He feels as peaceful here in this moment as he ever did in the water, he thinks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll miss it,” he admits quietly. “The water, it feels good, and the light…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why don’t we get you more of those blue and green lights of yours, hmm?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>silly</span>
  </em>
  <span>, I shouldn’t need them —”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey,” Eliot cuts him off, sharp enough that Quentin’s eyes open. “It’s not silly, Quentin. I can’t sleep with the windows closed, I need the curtains wide open, and when I still lived in the Cottage it was almost impossible to sleep at all. It wasn’t until Fogg said he needed it for students again and I moved in here that I realized I was triggering myself all the time. It’s all about not being trapped. You need to live at least part of your life in light like water because of how different it is to the Underworld and the magic. Margo’s got her quirks too, trust me. None of it’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>stupid</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Just means we’ve been through hell and back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe Eliot’s right. Maybe it isn’t silly. And he’s definitely right that Quentin wants to die again. He’ll have to one day, of course, everyone does, but he wants that day to come when he’s an old man again, preferably from natural causes that don’t hurt much. And the selkies never said the magic would last forever. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess,” Quentin says. “I’ll miss wearing the necklace, though.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You can still wear it,” Eliot says, puzzled. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I — I like it, but I think I’d better put it in my little box with the other things that I have from various covens, trinkets and things given for work I did, as mementoes, things like that. If I still wear it, it’ll be hard to resist going back in. But I like having a necklace — gives me something to do with my hands. I’ll have to go buy myself something, but that’s no big deal.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He isn’t sure why, but a slow smile is spreading over Eliot’s face, and then suddenly Quentin is having his forehead kissed before Eliot lets him go and steps back. “Hang on a second.” He turns away, rummaging in a drawer until he comes up with a necklace on a silver chain. It’s a square of glass like a small glass tile, clear with swirls of blue and green inside. Murano glass, Quentin thinks — he remembers Julia has a collection of pendants like it that she bought during summers down the Shore, mostly heart-shaped ones but a few like stars or teardrops. This one, as far as he can tell, is better quality. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I saw it at a street fair in the city,” Eliot explains. “Bought it on a whim but necklaces and ties don’t usually match, so I don’t have much cause to wear it. I do wear the glass-topped cufflinks that match it though, almost every day. Or other ones with the same design in different colors; I like them better than the old-school types I used to prefer.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin takes off the selkies’ pendant right then, holding shell and chain in his curled hand as Eliot walks back over to him, slipping the chain of the blue-green tile pendant over his head. A tile, like the clay tiles they spent a lifetime working with. Blue and green, like the lights that help Quentin find some measure of peace. He reaches up, brushing his thumb over the slightly rippled surface, the glass warming under his touch. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He remembers asking Sian, the selkie he knew best, about the legends related to the pelts. </span>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“So, did people always just steal them, to force a selkie into marriage?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Not always. Often. But sometimes we gave them. It was the ultimate gesture of trust, to give a selkie’s pelt. Our children… some of them bred true, some of them bred human, but they liked to give sea-spelled tokens like that necklace to their lovers in honor of our ways.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <span>On an impulse, Quentin reaches for Eliot’s hand, dropping the seashell pendant into it. “On second thought, you keep this for me,” he says, closing Eliot’s fingers around it. He can’t — he </span>
  <em>
    <span>can’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>say the words, yet, and he’s not even sure exactly why, but he can do this. He can at least do this. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I just said I don’t usually wear necklaces,” Eliot says softly, that little furrow between his brows just like that night at the Mosaic, the one from right before Eliot leaned in for their second kiss. “And I trust you not to sneak back into that fountain, Q. The tile’s a gift, you don’t need —” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, I know,” Quentin cuts him off. “I know, El. I just — want to. It feels right, you know?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And it does. This feels right, <em>they</em> feel right. So why the fuck can’t Quentin actually say so? What’s still too knotted inside him to let him speak?</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Two days after Quentin’s conversation with Eliot, he opens the door to find Julia there, two lamps in her arms. “Eliot told you?” he says blankly as he lets her in. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Nothing specific, just that you needed more blue and green light.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin has more lights already, actually. He and Eliot went shopping yesterday and bought more fairy lights, which now drip down from his ceiling and wrap around his bed. Quentin also charmed his window panes into stained glass with a spell Eliot showed him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the lamps Julia’s plugging in now look like lava lamps, except that instead of molten wax they’re full of colored liquid and glitter. Quentin blinks, and then bursts out laughing. “Wait, those are the sparkle lamps we used to ogle at the mall.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Right from that mall too. I went to Spencer’s for you like we were still in high school, Q,” Julia says with a grin. They’d both wanted these lamps as teenagers, but Quentin’s dad thought they were a fire hazard, and Julia’s mother thought they were tacky and wouldn’t have them in the house. Now, two of them glow in Quentin’s room, casting shimmery light on the walls. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I love them,” he says, and Julia grins, reaching up to ruffle his hair. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Told you all you have to do is ask.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah. I’m starting to get that idea.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wants to keep the conversation soft, but the next words out of his mouth are, “Why did you think the golem meant I was at peace?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Julia fumbles the lamp box she’s tearing up. “I — why are you asking me that?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I think I need to know,” Quentin says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Julia sighs, setting the box aside and looking at him. “I was so thrown — Alice refused the seance and then did that? And it was — it was you. </span>
  <em>
    <span>My </span>
  </em>
  <span>Quentin, the one who was only mine, just like I was only yours back then. I didn’t know what to think, except that she tore a piece of you and it had to be hurting you. But he seemed… happy. Happier than I remember twelve-year-old you being. I thought it must mean you were happy. Wherever the rest of you was. Maybe I just wanted to believe it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin sighs, then goes over to Julia. The look on her face is too close to the one she’d had that night at the bonfire, lost and sad. He’d wanted to hug her then, because he’d always hated it so much when she cried. He couldn’t then but he can now, and so he does, pulling her into a hug. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey. OK. It’s over, it’s done.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I never asked, did you get it back? Did that well idea work?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No,” Quentin says with a sigh. “But all in all, a bit of missing ankle isn’t the worst thing in the world, J.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hasn’t called her J in a long time. The last time was when he e-mailed her after he got her letter from rehab, but he did it a lot when they were in middle school and high school, because Q and J just sounded right together. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess it’s not. And it didn’t hurt you otherwise? You’re all right?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m all right,” Quentin says, in spite of memories without feelings attached, or knowing where that well went. He isn’t really talking about the effect of losing that bit so much as he is about being all right in general. He’s not sure it’s entirely true that he is, but he is sure that he’s getting there. That he will be. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe even that </span>
  <em>
    <span>they </span>
  </em>
  <span>will be. All of them, and the battered but real caring between them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s not a bad thought.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>Margo and Alice are getting married. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin’s initial plan is to send a nice gift with Eliot or Julia, and let that be that. He can’t imagine that either of them really want him to attend, after all. Regardless of what Margo’d told him over the mirror when Quentin was in Santa Fe, they never have sat down to discuss the supposed misunderstanding between them, and Alice has categorically refused to talk to Quentin about anything but magic stuff — basically he does consults for her. He doesn’t talk to either of them like friends except as part of the larger group. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But then an owl arrives with an official invitation. New Fillory has message-bunnies and post owls — as Margo put it, “our castle looks vaguely Disney and I guess I should just be fucking glad we didn’t make Hogwarts” because wild magic is like that, it pulls the shapes of what it needs from the minds of the casters. Hence, post owls. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin sighs. “They really sent me this?” he asks the owl — he thinks it’s supposed to be a barn owl but he’s never seen an </span>
  <em>
    <span>emerald green barn owl</span>
  </em>
  <span> —  who rotates its head and hoots softly at him, because it is not a Talking Owl and therefore can’t actually answer him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll take that as a yes,” Quentin says, and the owl ruffles its feathers as if in agreement. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He’s going to stop talking to the owl now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Someone knocks on his door, which is only the second unexpected thing to happen today. Quentin sighs, setting the invitation down on his little table, and opens the door to find Margo Hanson standing in front of him, in an all-black outfit that might be Earthling or New Fillorian, hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She looks like she means business and Quentin takes a step back before he remembers — hey, wait, this is his apartment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Margo. Can I help you?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Got the invite, I see. You and me, we’ve gotta talk, Coldwater, so let me in.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin does briefly consider being difficult about it, just because, again</span>
  <em>
    <span>, this is his apartment, </span>
  </em>
  <span>but the hassle doesn’t really seem worth it. So he steps back and lets Margo pass him, watching as she settles at his little table, reaching over to pet the owl perched on the back of the other chair like it’s an old habit by now. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe it is, and the image of Margo in full High King regalia petting a post owl is enough to make Quentin smile a little as he makes coffee for them both. “So what’s up?” he asks, setting a full cup of coffee as well as milk and honey on the table for her before fixing his own coffee at the counter. He boosts himself up onto it, his mug warm in his hands. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Still into the blue and green lighting scheme, I see,” Margo says, glancing around. “I admit, it is kinda pretty.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Margo…” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What, I can’t make conversation?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, you can, but I don’t think you’re here for small talk,” Quentin points out, then drinks some of his coffee while Margo watches him with narrowed eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re different. I knew that, but I’m not sure how much I actually knew that. Looks good on you, in a way. Fine, Quentin. I’m here about that ridiculous notion of yours that I don’t like you. I meant to come sooner but we had a few major messes to deal with in New Fillory. Also, I had a feeling ambushing you while you were settling in wouldn’t end well.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why not?” Quentin asks, curious. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because either I wouldn’t get a straight answer or I’d upset you enough that I’d end up with both you and El pissed at me, and I didn’t need that.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It matters if I’m angry with you?” Quentin retorts, and Margo sets her mug down with a loud clunk. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, it does. Look, I was pissed at you, with good reason. You stole magic from us, might have fucked us all over, and you didn’t regret it at all.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, it’s not like I had a choice in the matter unless you think I should have just stayed drifting in the ambient for eternity.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did I say that?” Margo asks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re implying it,” Quentin says, and Margo rolls her eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Jesus Christ. Did I say the changes looked good on you? You’re more fucking infuriating than ever. No, you shouldn’t have just let yourself stay trapped, but I’m still allowed to be annoyed that you helped yourself at our expense. The thing that really pissed me off was you treating us like your enemies when you got back.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’m not apologizing for that either,” Quentin says flatly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did I ask you to?” Margo leans back in her chair. “Here’s the thing, Q. I don’t get it. I don’t get why all the fucking rage from you, and what I really don’t get is how you got the idea I don’t like you anymore.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin rolls his eyes. “I think the not having a decent word for me after we got our memories back was a clear fucking indicator, Margo. You were the only one who would have been as fucked up by the Monster in Eliot’s body as me, and you left me alone to deal with it and didn’t have even your mocking-with-affection kind of good word for me. Not once.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I couldn’t talk to you, all right?” Margo yells, and then she looks away. From here, Quentin can see her hands clenching and unclenching as she tries to get a grip on whatever it is she’s feeling. But as the silence stretches, he gets impatient. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why not?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Margo sighs and shakes her head, still not looking at them. “You know Fillory had these crazy bullshit mourning rituals? And Fen, well. She fucking threw herself into them, official mourning for her husband. She tried to make me do them too. But I told her — I said I could never cry out all the sadness. And more than that, if I started I’d never stop.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin, wrongfooted, frowns. “I get that,” he says, carefully gentling his voice because he does get it. When it was Niffin Alice in his back, when it was the Monster with Eliot’s face latching onto him, Quentin had fought not to let himself break down for fear that he would simply never stop. That he would be useless for whatever he had to do about the evil ghost of a woman he’d loved. That he would cry until he screamed, and scream until he lost his mind, and the Monster that stole the man he loved would never give him back.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>So he understands Margo feeling that way, but what he doesn’t understand is what that has to do with him. “I get that,” he repeats, “but what does that have to do with you and me?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Margo sighs, and finally turns back to look at him. He understands in that moment Eliot’s ‘Bambi’ nickname more than he ever has, because there’s a sadness in Margo’s eyes that makes them look bigger than ever. “You said it yourself, Q. You and I lost him, no one else understood what that meant like we did. I needed to be on my game, I needed to be focused.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That went well once Fish Josh showed up,” Quentin mutters, unable to help it. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Turns out lycanthropy is a hell of a mind fuck,” Margo says, expression hardening slightly at Quentin’s attitude. “But my point is, of course I didn’t talk to you. For exactly the reasons you just said. No one but us would really get it, about El. I was afraid if I checked in with you, you’d break and then I’d break and we’d both end up useless. I had no idea how far gone you were or I’d have fucking sat on you rather than let you go with Alice and Liam that day. I had to tell him, you know. The day Eliot woke up, first thing he said after telling me he missed me was asking where you were.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Margo shakes her head. “I’ve never seen a look on his face as horrible as when I told him you were dead, Q. Me myself, I think I was in shock till after the bonfire. It just didn’t seem real. In some ways it didn’t seem real till you were actually back, delirious in a hospital bed and begging us not to send you back.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin doesn’t know what to say to that but Margo’s not done. “And you really thought we would, didn’t you? You haven’t said it in so many words, not even in that meltdown to your therapist.” She must see a flash of anger on Quentin’s face because she waves a hand. “Chill, Eliot didn’t give details, but I’m pretty sure if you’d said that he’d have mentioned it because it would have fucked him up. But you meant it, didn’t you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin forgot this about Margo. How sometimes she’d just aim right at the things no one else had gotten to, yet. He sighs, taking another sip of coffee to give himself a moment. “Not… once I was coherent. That would have meant, you know. Murdering me, and I may have been kinda paranoid once I got back but not like that. But… if you’re asking me if I believed that when I was still in the ambient, if you’re asking if that’s part of why I stopped trying to make contact, then… Then, yes. I did believe that if I succeeded in reaching out, the only help I’d get would be to be sent to a peaceful afterlife.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It’s strange, but he feels better for saying it. And he </span>
  <em>
    <span>can </span>
  </em>
  <span>say it to Margo, is the thing. Alice would probably fly into a self-righteous insulted temper about it, Julia would go off about all the ways he’s wrong, and Quentin doesn’t know what Eliot would </span>
  <em>
    <span>say </span>
  </em>
  <span>but he can picture the stricken expression that would be on his face. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He feels better for saying it, because maybe he needs one of them to know. Needs one of them to confirm or deny his worst fears.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Margo just watches him with huge sad eyes, and then nods once, sipping her own coffee like she needs the delaying tactic too. “I wondered. For what it’s worth, that wouldn’t have happened. I’m sure of that. If we knew you were still really around, not just a scrap of you that didn’t even do what it had been summoned for, we’d have figured something out. A proper golem or something like that. We’d have made it work.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You sound so sure,” Quentin says softly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I am sure. Might not have been a unanimous decision, might have been some loud arguments before we got a plan together, but no way would we have just left you trapped, and we wouldn’t have just sent you on unless that was what you wanted. And we’d know if it was, because we </span>
  <em>
    <span>absolutely </span>
  </em>
  <span>would have talked to you, at which point we’d know what you wanted.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin can guess the likeliest holdout — Liam, and he can’t even fault the guy for that, given what happened when Alice 23 brought back Quentin 23. But Margo… The thing about Margo is that he can’t remember her ever lying to him. He knows she can lie, and lie well, and manipulate the hell out of a situation, but he’s always figured she doesn’t have the patience to bother with pretty lies that aren’t necessary. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Which means that he can be… mostly certain, if not completely sure, that she isn’t lying to him now.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin takes a deep breath and lets it out slow, thinking of Margo sitting with him on the steps after the Welters game, promising to enchant a mirror to keep in touch with him. The absolute cold fury on her face when he’d declared he was going to stay with the Monster. “I should have just stayed at the hospital with you that day to begin with,” he says without really meaning to. “Except then — Everett — ” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Make them take a gun,” Margo says. “Worked for me once upon a time. No magic, just shoot the bastard. I meant to suggest it but Liam zapped you back out too fast and I was — </span>
  <span>I didn’t expect Eliot to be that hurt. I forgot all about it.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“That’s fair,” Quentin says, and he just can’t keep his voice steady anymore. “I missed you too, you know. It’s not just El and Jules, and whatever the fuck there is with Alice.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No shit, you idiot. You think I didn’t miss you too? Wait, you were watching, not mindreading, you probably do think that. Newsflash, I keep shit inside ‘cause if I don’t, I won’t fucking stop. Get over here,” Margo demands as she stands up, and Quentin, a little bewildered, does as he’s told. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Oof,” is all he manages as Margo practically collides with him, hugging him tight enough he seriously questions his ability to breathe for a moment. Quentin hugs her back — tightly, but not quite </span>
  <em>
    <span>as </span>
  </em>
  <span>tightly — and breathes in the strange flower-spice scent in her hair, another of those knots deep inside him unraveling.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll see you at the wedding, right?” Margo asks.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Of course,” Quentin says, because what else would he say now?</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>New Fillory is beautiful. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Of course, in a way Quentin knows that. He was here when it was made, watching it form in a swirl of magic and matter, but the thing about being in the magic is, you see things, but you don’t see them exactly right. There are distortions, unless you focus in because you want to watch. Quentin hadn’t wanted to watch New Fillory form. He’d come to steal, not observe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And because of it...</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The sky here is blue with a hint of lavender, but the clouds… the clouds are white, and yet there’s a shimmer of gold there. The footprint of a magical ghost flying through the spell as it shaped this newborn world. Oh, he can’t be sure. He had no conscious part in shaping the direction of the spell, he simply pulled a few loose threads of power off its edges. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But the clouds are dusted in gold. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin keeps this little tidbit to himself, and strangely, this secret warms him instead of feeling heavy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>After he leaves his bag in the room he’s been given, Quentin wanders out to the gardens, curious. He’s studying an ivy-like vine covered in silvery flowers when he hears footsteps on the path behind him. He doesn’t turn, because he has a feeling he knows who’s going to be behind him. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t think you’d show up,” Alice says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin turns around, and he knows the smile on his face is no more pleasant than the twist of Alice’s mouth as she looks him up and down. “I’m guessing you didn’t want Margo to invite me?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You have to admit, it is a little weird.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I mean, Fen and Josh are on the guest list, and weren’t they jointly dating Margo as well as each other for a little while?” Quentin asks, keeping his voice mild. Alice rolls her eyes. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not really the same thing. But, no, I only told her not to invite you because I didn’t want to give you the chance to refuse to come. I don’t mind you being here. It makes things cleaner, even if it is weird.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ve been back for months,” Quentin points out. “Why would you think I wouldn’t come?” Of course, he had been originally planning just that, but he’s curious about Alice’s reasoning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why did you leave in the first place?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Why did you, after I brought you back from being a Niffin?” Quentin asks, and suddenly he’s tired of this, His ankle hurts — it always does, and yet it always seems worse in Alice’s presence, as if the missing bit knows who is responsible and doesn’t care about intentions.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because you wanted me to be the girl I was before. I couldn’t stand it anymore, especially when I needed to know who I’d become. I couldn’t do that with your sad damn eyes on me.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I missed the girl you were before,” Quentin agrees. “And I wanted to help, and it upset me that I felt like I didn’t even recognize you. But my point is, what makes you think it was so different for me?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Because you dragged me back against my will, meanwhile we let you go to find peace and you blamed us for it.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Alice, can you really tell me you all didn’t just expect me to slot back in where I’d left?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Well, why shouldn’t we? Isn’t that what you came back for, and then you turned into a whiny brat because we’d kept on living our lives?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin shakes his head. “No. I came back because I didn’t want to be trapped forever. I came back because I wanted to undo the choice I’d made, and by a freak coincidence I had the opportunity to do that. I came back for me, because </span>
  <em>
    <span>I</span>
  </em>
  <span> wanted to. I didn’t come back for any of you.” This is not entirely true, of course, but there’s truth enough in it. There were memories that made him begin to fight, but what kept him pushing on was his own stubbornness, his own need to save turned at long last to the goal of saving himself. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“But you did blame us for not saving you,” Alice insists, though she seems a little bit shaken by the fact that he hadn’t come back for them. He hadn’t realized she thought that — it explains some of her anger, if she’d believed he came back for love of them and then turned on them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even so, Quentin wants to insist, as he has before, that it wasn’t really blame. But instead, he takes a deep breath and says, “In a way. It’s not quite as simple as that, Alice, but you’re not entirely wrong with the things you’ve been accusing me of. It’s — I was angry, all right? I’ll probably always be angry, because right before you and Eliot tossed things that might have saved me, he and Margo used time magic to save Fen and Josh. After your little hike, Julia chose letting the apocalypse happen so Liam wouldn’t die, then Liam used time magic to save a random ghost buddy of his and then Julia. Jane even helped him save Julia after working to talk Eliot out of saving me!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“It’s not that we didn’t want to, Quentin. We couldn’t risk it. Pulling you back might have landed us in the same boat as Timeline 23, and as for the time magic, if Eliot wrote a letter telling you to throw the bottles faster Everett still would have shown up and who knows what might have happened then.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Margo says I should have stayed behind and someone should have brought a gun,” Quentin says. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, she told me that too. On the other hand, maybe his juiced-up blood would have exploded and killed us all. Did you want that?” Alice asks. Quentin scowls. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Now that’s just unfair. No. But here’s the thing, Alice. We didn’t need to throw the bottles faster. I didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>fail to make it out</span>
  </em>
  <span>, Alice. I killed myself, which everyone kept trying to avoid realizing. I admit that I can’t be sure if a letter from Eliot… if it would have been the push I needed to keep running. Might have been, because I was so fucking far gone I forgot what stopping meant and the letter might have helped me remember. Or maybe not. I just… wish you guys had given it more thought than a couple sentences, can you understand that?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Another of the knots seems to unravel as Quentin speaks, the relief of finally laying it all out for someone more wonderful than he’d realized. He can’t say this to Eliot, or even Julia; they’d been at least thinking about the possibilities, and also he thinks — he thinks it would hurt them in a way he doesn’t think it will hurt Alice, not now. She’s angry enough at him, and she wants answers, and he thinks she’ll prefer them to kindness. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You told me to let you go,” Alice says. “Your golem —” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Didn’t know shit, Alice.” He could tell her that the well went to Tartarus, and that if the rest of him had actually been in the Underworld he would have been dragged there. He could tell her that his ankle is permanently damaged and some of his memories of being twelve no longer have feelings attached. But — suddenly — he doesn’t want to be cruel. He doesn’t really want to be any angrier than he absolutely has to be, that kernel of fury that encompasses not only what happened to him but everything since his Timeline 1 counterpart found Eliot dead and then made a devil’s bargain with Jane </span>
  <em>
    <span>fucking </span>
  </em>
  <span>Chatwin. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And realizing that he no longer wants to lash out seems to help him breathe easier. Chases away some piece of the tensions he’s still working through. So instead of saying things that can only hurt, he says, “You basically made the — the opposite mistake to me.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Alice asks, frowning. “You lost me, Quentin. What mistake did I make, and which one of yours are you talking about?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin sighs, turning to pace along the edges of one of the flower beds. “OK. I was wrong to drag you back to humanity against my will. However, I wasn’t wrong to think ‘hey, I have no reason to believe Niffin Alice is being honest with me.’ Remember that I saw the brother you adored enjoy hurting you once he was a Niffin. My mistake wasn’t in not believing you, it was in going from that reasonable idea to thinking I knew what you did want — based on our ‘garbage fire of a relationship,’ I believe were your words.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice sighs, tapping her foot against the stone path. “I can see that. I was telling you the truth, but I guess I can concede that Niffins aren’t necessarily a reliable source of information about the humans they used to be. If I was any example, most Niffins are too bored by deceit to lie, but there was enough sadism there that I might have lied just to hurt you if I thought it was the best way.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin nods. “Right. So I didn’t listen to you when I should have, or at least sought a second opinion somehow instead of assuming you were lying and I knew best.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I guess,” Alice says slowly. “But I don’t see what this has to do with what I did.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You listened to a version of me that had no idea what he was talking about, and no real connection to what had actually happened to me. He was just spouting things that sounded nice because the pretty ladies he was talking to seemed sad.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice frowns, and for a moment Quentin thinks she’s going to yell at him, but instead her face crumples. She doesn’t cry, though, just closes her eyes and breathes through it until she calms down. Quentin is tempted to go comfort her, but he doesn’t think it would help if he did. So he waits instead, doing his best to be silent and not disturb her. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>When her eyes open, there’s a terrible bleakness there in eyes that are bluer now than they were before a long-ago Alice burned up in blue flames and a long-ago Quentin set a cacodemon on what was left. Long ago and long lost, both of those half-grown children they’d once been. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know what I kept thinking?” she says. “You made me watch you die. But before that, I made you watch me become a Niffin. And now — from what you’re saying — we just keep doing this. The same awful shit to each other, remixed or reversed or whatever fucking word is best for it but we just keep doing it!” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Yeah,” Quentin says softly. “I noticed that too. We also kept trying to date again because one of us needs an anchor to the world, more than any real sense that we might do better this time. But you’re getting married, and I’m… if I ask anyone out again it’ll only be one person. So that’s done and dusted, and I hope… I hope the rest of it is too. Because I don’t want to hurt you anymore, Vix. And sorry, I won’t use that again if you don’t want but — just this one last time.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“No, Q — I think I missed it. It was so much easier there, wasn’t it? As foxes, or afterwards because there was nothing but us and the snow, or the white walls once we were inside,” Alice says softly. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“So much easier,” Quentin agrees. “I don’t regret it. We made each other happy for a little while, and that’s — that’s something, that matters. If there’s anything I understand now it’s that those things matter whether they last or not. And I want you to be happy. That part of the things you said to me was never true. I didn’t want you or any of the others to be miserable forever. I — you all mean so much to me, I couldn’t.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Alice nods, looking at him steadily for a long moment. “I am happy. Are you?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin meets that blue gaze. “Not yet. But I’m starting to think I can be again, and that’s something I didn’t know when I came back. To life or to New York. So I think progress is enough to be going on with.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the thing is, he means that. He means everything he’s said. And he thinks that maybe, just maybe, he and Alice finally understand each other a little.</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>The wedding is as elaborate and formal as it ought to be, given that it’s the High King and the High Queen of New Fillory getting married. Quentin is near Julia, Liam, and Penny, watching as Margo and Alice exchange vows. Eliot is, of course, Margo’s best man, while Kady is actually standing up with Alice. Fen is presiding, something about being known as the Mother Priestess because she somehow literally gave birth to New Fillory? That’s another of those things which Quentin’s never gotten the full story on, and in this case he really doesn’t think he wants to.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The reception is as fancy as the wedding, but lavish, extravagant. The room is full of flower garlands and brilliant magical lighting, the music perfect for dancing but not quite loud enough to prevent people from talking at the tables or while they dance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin dances with Julia a few times, once with Julia and Kady while they laugh. He likes seeing them together. He likes seeing Julia happy in general, whether she’s with Hope, Liam, or Kady, but there’s something about her and Kady that’s… There’s a bit of mischief to their relationship, or something, that always just makes him smile. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You’re not so bad at this, Coldwater,” Kady teases, spinning him around. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I used to be terrible,” Quentin laughs, and then ducks out because his ankle’s starting to hurt. Drinking some juice at his seat, he spots Eliot across the hall talking to Charlton and… Is that Todd? In Fillorian clothes? Quentin remembers Eliot telling him that Todd relocated to New Fillory to help with the magic school they’ve set up, and he knows that Charlton works there or attends or something, but still. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There’s a brief moment where something like jealousy twists in Quentin’s chest, but then Eliot catches his eye over their heads and smiles. Quentin smiles back, offering a mock salute. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Hey, Coldwater. Stop flirting with El and dance with me.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin turns to see Margo, one hand outstretched and the other on her hip. Laughing a little, Quentin lets himself be drawn back into the dancing. First with Margo, then with Julia and Liam which is probably one of the weirder moments of his life, and then with Alice, who he partners through a more sedate dance. At the end, he leans in and kisses her cheek. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Congratulations, Vix,” he says softly in her ear. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You shouldn’t wait forever, you know. Or leave him hanging,” Alice says back just as quietly, and smiles when Quentin stares at her, wide-eyed with surprise. “I’m not stupid, Q. I’ve been in your head, remember?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I remember.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Margo says the same thing when he dances with her again. “El’s ready to wait God knows how long, but come on, Q. Give him a hint, huh?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know,” Quentin says. Margo’s eyes drift down to the necklace he’s wearing — the necklace he never takes off — but she doesn’t ask about it. Julia never has either, though he’s seen her looking at it and then at Eliot’s cufflinks the way she eyed Andrew Carter back in high school after Quentin started watching American Idol because Andrew liked it and it gave Quentin an excuse to talk to him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Margo goes off to dance with her wife next and Quentin is drifting toward the edge of the floor when someone clears their throat behind him. Quentin turns to find Eliot there, holding out a hand. “May I?” he says, and Quentin smiles as he takes Eliot’s hand. That’s when he notices, mostly hidden by his clothes, that Eliot is wearing the seashell necklace today. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>It makes Quentin smile. “So Todd’s new gig worked out?” he asks. Eliot makes the oddest face, somewhere between confusion, amusement, and sincere pleasure. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Eli, actually,” he says, and now he looks a tad sheepish as well. “Todd’s actual name is Elliot, nicknamed Eli because apparently for him it’s a family name. When I met him, I… might have insisted that he use his middle name because having two Eliots around wasn’t acceptable.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Eliot, what the fuck,” Quentin says, torn between wanting to scold and wanting to laugh. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I know, I know. If I’d known he went by Eli maybe I wouldn’t have been such a pushy asshole, but this is first-year me we’re talking about so no promises there. Anyway, he’s doing good.” And now that odd expression is back on Eliot’s face. “He and Charlton are dating,” he says slowly, and Quentin blinks. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Uh. Wow. Good — good for them. Didn’t Todd — Eli — spend years trying to be you?” He stole Eliot’s vests and kept the Margolem around like a prop.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eliot shrugs. “They said they both found themselves at the new school, and each other at the same time. I’m glad for them. And a little fucking confused, but you know, I feel the same way when I see Josh and Fen, and Fen is apparently three months pregnant with their first kid so no accounting for who fits with who, right?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin laughs, and lets Eliot use the dance as an excuse to pull him closer and press a kiss to the top of his head. Quentin melts into Eliot’s hold and thinks, </span>
  <em>
    <span>almost. Soon. I won’t keep you waiting too much longer.</span>
  </em>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;&lt;&gt;</span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>In the end, there’s no big moment. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He and Eliot are just walking out of the main building when Quentin’s eyes land on the sign. For a moment he can almost see Eliot as he was, in his ridiculous pose with his cigarette and his fluffy hair and his tight pants. He can almost see himself too, confused and stumbling, staring up at Eliot like he was something unreal. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Glancing sidelong at Eliot now, his hair short again but less styled than it was, in a white dress shirt and pale grey trousers with matching tie but no suit jacket today, his cufflinks the same swirl of blue and green as the necklace Quentin wears, he still looks a little unreal. A little impossible. But then he always has. Kneeling on a seaside cliff, stumbling out of the Neitherlands into the Cottage, taking back his body only for a moment in a park. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Even broken by sorrow at a bonfire, or trying to let that pain go at a well. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He looks unreal by torchlight sitting on a multicolored quilt, or wrapped in a dark coat standing by a fountain with its water shut off for the winter. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>The truth is, Eliot has always been magic as much as magic itself, and the reason for that — the reason Quentin never fully understood — is that maybe, deep down, part of him always knew that he would love him. Not that he fell in love at first sight because that’s bullshit, but sensed on some level that it would happen, that it was… </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Not fate. But just them. Just what would happen naturally between them, given the chance. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>There are still knotted-up feelings inside him. Maybe there always will be. Kernels of anger and pain and fear, but there’s less of them now. They haven’t ruled him in months. He’s doing all right. He’s even treading on the edge of happiness. He thinks, maybe, there’s only one thing he still needs to do before he can tip over into that feeling. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And the words are almost there. Like being caught in undertow and fighting the current back to shore, finally feeling solid ground beneath his feet again.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“You know, you never did tell me how the hell you got up on that sign in those tight pants,” Quentin says, buying himself just a little time with a silly little question he’d never got around to asking. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What?” Eliot says, following Quentin’s gaze to the sign. “Oh,” he chuckles. “Remember how I told you, back when Margo and I gave you the tour, that most Physical kids could fly? I levitated up there. I had a show to put on, you know.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eliot’s grin is full of so much mischief, and Quentin can’t help it. “Hey,” he says, cutting in front of Eliot with a hand on his chest to stop him from walking forward. Then Quentin pushes up on tiptoe and kisses Eliot softly. “I love you.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Eliot’s expression when Quentin sinks back down off his toes is quietly stunned, so like his expression a lifetime ago. His eyes are closed, but when he blinks them open he searches Quentin’s face. Quentin lets him, hoping Eliot finds whatever it is he’s looking for. He is not expecting Eliot to say, “Am I hallucinating?” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Quentin laughs, a startled wet sound as tears gather in his eyes. “If you were, how would asking me help? I love you, Eliot. I’m sorry it took me so long to say so.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>For another moment, Eliot is still shocked, but then a smile bright as the sun spreads across his face, and his eyes are wet too as he steps closer, sliding one arm around Quentin’s waist and cupping his other hand round the back of his neck, pulling Quentin up into a slow, deep kiss. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>And Quentin knows — love is not a cure-all. Healing may continue for the rest of their lives. But this, Eliot,</span>
  <em>
    <span> loving him</span>
  </em>
  <span> and making a life together, this is what he wants.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He wanted to go home, he wanted to be anchored again. Now he understands that Eliot is that for him, home and safe harbor, and that they can be that for each other. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>That is what they </span>
  <em>
    <span>will </span>
  </em>
  <span>be, from here on out.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Come chat with me at eidetictelekinetic.tumblr.com or @Fae_Boleyn on Twitter! Or, for the RP inclined, cardtricksandminormendings.tumblr.com!</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>